The post you are reporting:
I enjoy blogs and forums and especially like DoverForum. Recently I found a terrific article AGAINST forums which, while nothing more than one grumpy sod having a rant, does manage to inject a certain point-of-view that forces you to question the actual "value" of online discussions. On the surface it's just an angry outburst, but deep down this is actually a very clever and well thought-out argument.
So guys, FORUMS, MESSAGE BOARDS, BLOGS, SOCIAL NETWORKING. Is it a GOOD thing (as I believe it is) or is it a BAD thing (as Matt Edwards thinks)? Read his article and have your say...
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AGAINST FORUMS - by Matt Edwards
You, reading this. Yeah, you, at the keyboard. You think you're pretty special, don't you? You trawl the Internet looking for articles to add comments to so that you can grace the world with your opinion. We all trawl the Internet too, but we're not looking for places to have our say, we're specifically looking out for your opinions. That's because you're so bloody good. You've managed, with no research or education on any subject at all, to be the one person who's right about everything. Film, music, politics - you're right about it all. We need you to right all the world's wrongs. You're amazing, you are. Special old you.
I think there are two main reasons that forums are so crap.
One reason is that most people, most of YOU, are awful idiots with nothing interesting or insightful to say. Not only that, but even if you did have something to say that was worth hearing you wouldn't know how to express it. Throw that under a cloak of anonymity and everyone seems to think they're either a superhero or a super villain, bringing justice to message boards and comments forums all over the web or making the most outrageous comments they can to get a response, and you'd have to concede that, essentially, the Internet is a wasteland. It's like the diary of a million inarticulate wastrels.
The other reason is that people don't know the value of their opinions anymore. They sit at home and watch X Factor and get to choose what happens. They get to talk on the news as part of real factual reports to give their opinions. They can publish blogs. People receive constant reinforcement that their opinion is of equal worth to the next person's, which means that an educated opinion is worth the same as an uneducated one. If you can't see the problem with that, yours is the uneducated opinion.
It's time to accept that your opinion isn't worth anything. You don't know about pop music, you shouldn't be voting on X Factor and choosing the next big pop star. You don't know about filmmaking, you shouldn't be writing long winded diatribes about what professional filmmakers are doing wrong. You don't know about economics, you have no business analysing the effects of BAA's financial performance on the market. You only know about serving people overly-complicated types of coffee. When that topic comes up, that's when we'll be looking to you for input. When we talk about the menial nonsense you use to fill your day, we'll be heading straight to you.